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Friday, January 30, 2009

Outtakes: Chris Stamey of the dB's, on a New Album, Forthcoming Projects

In this week's paper, Roy Kasten interviews Chris Stamey of the dB's, who will be in town on Sunday playing a few shows with his partner-in-crime, Peter Holsapple. (Read Holsapple's blog. Really.) The first is a free show at 1 p.m. at Euclid Records, for the store's 45 RPM charity series. The second is a full-on rock show at Off Broadway that night at 8 p.m.. True rockers don't watch the Super Bowl, right? Roy's interview is here, but below please enjoy a few outtakes -- including information about a new dB's studio record, the first one since 1987's The Sound of Music! (More on that later today. Promise.)

What are your notable current or upcoming projects?I stay pretty busy in my studio, Modern Recording. I recently mixed tracks for the Rosebuds and the Old Ceremony and am working on projects with the Mountain Goats, Sally Spring, American Aquarium, Patrick Phelan, and Scott Litt. And one day we'll finish that dB's record.
Any plans to make another record with Peter?I suspect our next new project might be a live record this summer
of some of the songs we've been playing together as a duo over the
years.

Any plans for another solo record or a dB's record?
The next dB's record has been in the works for a few years now. We have
recorded around 10 tracks, with Scott Litt and Mitch Easter, but we
have more to track, and in the meantime Peter and I have this new
record and an early-summer tour to put together. Now that Axl has
finally released his, we really have to get a move on.

Peter
and I do enjoy playing some of the dB's songs in our "duo identity,"
we'll probably play a few in St. Louis. We are open to suggestions as
to which to try, you can suggest folks send suggestions to the dB's message board.

I
am working with NYC producer and drummer Anton Fier on arrangements for
a new solo record of mine. And Peter is doing a comprehensive acoustic
recording of his catalog, I'm sure something will come to light from
those sessions as well.

How long is this tour?
We are not on tour yet! We just had a kind offer to come to St. Louis
and decided it was a great idea. We will tour in late May or early June.